Tuesday, September 27, 2016

It’s hard isn’t it? To get it
all done? To feel that everything on the list is finally checked
off? And that list it just doesn’t seem to get any smaller. All
around you is advice about staying in the moment, letting things fall aside for
time with your teen, a cuddle with your baby, a game of soccer with your kids.

That would be nice if it weren’t for
the reality of meetings, shopping, cleaning, driving, practices, rehearsals,
deadlines, and the maintenance of friendships. It’s hard. There’s
no two ways about it.

I see you. You. I see
that you are tired, and the day has only begun. I see you sigh as you do
the thousandth run to Target, put your bags in your car, check your phone,
shake your head and wearily go back to the bullseye for what you forgot.
I see you in the hallway, on your way to the cafeteria, in the auditorium, with
the panic in your eyes that you are worried that you will be alone
again. And worried more that you will have to talk to strangers.

I see you, at the deli counter
checking your watch, eyeing the hot foods aisle and wondering if you can just
do that to spare your feet, hands, and heart another evening of rush. I
see you, trying to scan as many items as you can and smile furtively at the
irritated woman in front of you. I see you as she snaps at your inability
to do the simple thing she asked of you. I see you slouch a little more
as the smile and good wishes you offer go completely ignored.

I see you at the cemetery, arranging
the flowers and sitting on damp grass with dry eyes, because every tear you
could have possibly shed is long since gone. I see you, on the airplane,
struggling to buckle your seat and making yourself smaller knowing that people
are looking at you with disgust. I see the beads of sweat on your face as
you try to answer the question, consider the opinion, offer a solution. I
see you still your right hand with your left at Bible study. I see
you. I really do see you.

How often do we really see each
other? How often do we see what’s left out or over? Because I have
become convinced that a lot of what is wrong right now comes from this, this
idea that we aren’t being seen. Without being seen or acknowledged, we
pass through life as ghosts, uncounted. And sometimes, if the
circumstances align, we are revealed in ways that are disastrous to ourselves,
to our loved ones, and to the whole world.

I’ve been quiet over the
summer. I haven’t been here and talking to you. But that doesn’t
mean I haven’t been hearing, reading, and seeing what has been
happening—heartbreaking doesn’t even cover it. Bombings, shootings,
world-wide terror, home grown anger and historic rage. For the first
time, in a long time, I had difficulty articulating it. I’d sit here and
wonder whatI could possibly say that made any sense at all. I’d
start. I’d end.

So I decided if one post wouldn’t
cover it, I’d write four. All interrelated. Not about what we’re
doing wrong, other than to identify it, butwhat we can
do to put it right.

And it all
starts with this:being seen.

Both offsocial media and on it.
Because I think the reason the bad feelings and ill will continue on into cyber
space is exactly because we aren’t being seen. It is then easier to
collapse behind a screen and spread unrest by taking extraordinary measures to
being “seen” virtually.

Stay with me. Please just stay
with me. This is the first part of this series that talks about the
beginning and ending of all things: love. That’s the end
game, that's what we're striving for. This is just the first
part, Being Seen: A Love Primer Part I.

____________________________________

We are out and going to get a treat
for Joe’s lesson; after not playing for years, he’s impressed himself and his
teacher with his memory of strings, notes, hand positions, and how gracefully
to hold a bow. We walk in and I immediately get upset seeing the signs
proclaiming the return of pumpkin spice. “Don’t get so upset!” “But
it ONLY belongs in A PIE!” We both giggle. And I look at him and
think how much more will I get to have? How much more giggle space?
How much more room? How possible is it to like someone this much and love
them even more?

Two young men who were locking up
their bikes before we came in, come through the line. The smaller one,
blond hair, bronzed skin, dark eyes, bumps past Joe and doesn’t look
back. The rudeness here astonishes me. I hear him now talking to
his friend about how he doesn’t want to pay for anything. The server asks
him what he’d like. The server’s barked at. Biker 2's voice
changes from petulant and defiant to the grating noise the adults make on thePeanuts
specials. I look with
concern at the server. He is completely at ease. This makes me even
more worried.

Why is he at ease? Why
did he not say, “hey they were ahead of you!” Why is the
barking and the order and the lack of civility not bothering him more?

They are alike in so many ways:
blond, of the same age, give or take. One is working there and one is
not. The only difference as far as I can tell—cosmetically, in any
case. Joe walks up next. I put a hand on his shoulder to steady
myself from giving—gentle people, the name I want to give this rude sweating
boy-man is nothing to do with being a child of God—the most vicious stare I can
muster. I focus on Joe. “Could I please have a chocolately
chocolate chip frappuccino please?” The server nods.

“Hi” I say brightly, figuring my
smile can make up for a whole bunch of ills and place my order too. He
nods, I scan. We wait. Rudeness continues to swirl all around
us. Bumps, irritations, no words said. Joe gets his and pipes his
thanks. I yell mine over the heads of the rudes. The ghost of a
smile on the barista behind the counter gives acknowledgement. It’s not
much. But I’ll take it. Joe grins too. We did some
good. We saw him. He saw us seeing him. We said we see you
and we appreciate you and we value you. We know it’s your job, but thank
you for doing it. Thank you for doing it the way you are doing it.
Thank you.

And another.

We are in line at the ice cream
shop. A large family is in front of us. A well-dressed man, and
another more casual, the third a good mix of the two. The women are
wearing robes, some have headscarves, some don’t. The children are crazy,
as every child in the world is in an ice cream shop. I hear Arabic.
I see glances at my uncovered legs. A child kicks me twice, Jake says,
“Mommy, she kicked you.”

I look for the mother, and she meets
my eyes and says nothing. The third kick I stop, saying, “don’t kick me,
it isn’t nice.” An irritated stare from the suit. Barked orders at
the server. The list of treats becomes longer and longer. The girls
are asked what they want. The server asks what the women want, he is
told, “don’t ask them. I will decide what they will have. Just do
it.” So he does. They pay. No thanks are offered, a wish for
a good day is given but ignored. The line behind me grumbles.

Some racial slurs are offered and
when I turn become muted. After all, I am brown too. Still, I
smile brightly and said, “hey could I please have—“

“Chocolate with rainbow sprinkles!”

And we go on. As we sit,
the boys and I, Joe looks over at me and says, “well it happened again, right
mommy?”

“What do you mean?” I ask wondering
about the slurs and the news and equations being made in a fresh brain.

“They were really rude to the
scooper.” I nod slowly. Joe sighs and picks up his spoon, “It
doesn’t seem to matter what you look like, everyone is rude just the
same. No one decided to see the guy behind the counter as a
person.” I unclench.

“That’s true,” I say.

______________________________________

The choice to see is completely and
ironically color blind. It is not bound by socio-economic status either,
or by gender. It is just a way in which we’ve lost step with the body
human.

We have lost sight and, in that way,
we have lost God.

I don’t think that’s overstating
it. I’ve written about the importance ofempowerment,kindness, andjustice. Now
it is clear though, that what we see is not even a portion of what we’re
missing. We do it in every facet of our lives. On social media, the
very vehicle for public sharing (and shaming), what do we see? Who do we
acknowledge? What is the result of not hitting “like?”

Illustration of Lazarus at the rich man's gate by Fyodor Bronnikov, 1886

Last week's Gospel reading was Luke
16, Lazarus and the Rich Man. The
interpretations are many and varied, but what struck me and Jake was simple
fact that the wealthy (unnamed) man stepped over a bleeding, starving,
desperate Lazarus daily to get into his home. It's really as if he didn't
see him.

That is, at least, part of the
point. Maybe he did see him, but it had become a part of his landscape,
as familiar as the plants near the stoop or the woman selling figs nearby, or
the children playing. It was a part of his daily life, he became
desensitized to it, and just saw it as a part and parcel of his existence. Nothing
to do or say or see or move upon. He ceased to see him.

We're doing this. We are all
the rich man. We are all Lazarus. We are not seeing. How many
times have you seen the meme about people on their cell phones? That the
real zombie apocalypse is upon us? Our virtual sight has
completely superseded our actual vision. I take out mine as
soon as I start to feel uncomfortable; at times, to appear busy. Without
an outstanding emergency, there is nothing that cannot wait for a reasonable
time or break in which to check it. And it isn't just that I am forgoing
engaging with the world as I look at it through a screen, I am sacrificing my
safety too. Because how well could I possibly know my surroundings if I
am busy looking at a small screen instead of seeing what's around me?

We are losing sight of each other
and as we move in distance around one another, we begin to lose our humanity,
our commonality, and what God wanted for us, so desperately. God’s Bible
is made up of two parts an Old and New Testament. Gospels were
created under the divine guidance of God by certain authors. But the
Bible as we know it? The Bible that sits here with me now, this has been
culled together by early Church fathers. Not the content mind you, the
order and the organization. It has been translated over and over and
over again. It is interesting to me then, that so many have used
this word to justify actions of alienation, violence, submission,
discrimination, ostracism…it goes on. As humans there are no limits
in the means we can hurt each other and in doing so there are just as many ways
in which God’s word has been used to justify it.

Writing and reading have been my way to process everything I see
for so long now. Writing is easier for me than talking—to most
people. But there have been times when I’ve written and people haven’t
read it and just made snap judgments and comments that are hurtful. Or
there are times when they’ve read and landed 180 degrees entirely in the other
direction I’d hoped for. It’s maddening. And it makes me wonder how
wise the words “those who have eyes let them see.”

I don’t get it. I reckon
that often God is also shaking and saying, “okay then. That is NOT
what I meant.” For me this is as easy as it gets, and as basic: love. Nowhere
in the Bible does it direct you to actively hate. You can be angry
and hurt yes, but hate? No. My job here is to love
you. Love you as much as I possibly can. God will be the
arbiter and the judge. I do not need you to do it, and I do not need
to either. It’s impossibly freeing. Judgment is left for
God, and I am free to love. But I know this too. God sees
me. The real me, the scared me and the insecure me and the
prejudiced me and the weary me. God sees all this. God
knows it.

So anything that can take me away
from the job given to me to love as much as I can has to be
curtailed. Whether it is a friendship that has taken a sour turn, a
relationship that is more need than want, a job that is everyday rather than
necessary; all of this needs to be reevaluated, reconsidered and reworked. It
is okay toeliminate the cataractsthat are deliberately obscuring your
vision. No one—no thing—has that right. Because if you
continue you will look down to avoid it, your eye will turn inward on what’s
safe and familiar, you will no longer seek, you will yield. That is
no way to live. You cannot look up and declare, “madness” and
then look down again. You have to keep your gaze directed
upward. Do not avert it. Do not shield it. See
and be seen.

It sits uncomfortably, doesn’t
it? Since we’re already there, let’s make ourselves more uncomfortable
because out of discomfort comes growth, understanding and change. Don’t
turn away. Don’t turn away from the questions you are being asked by the
news, your neighbor and your children....

Like mine. Like my Joe, who
asked, very quietly in the car after our celebratory run: “What is Black Lives
Matter?”

Joe is 11. For
the most part, he lives a life of privilege. He has a two parent home; he
goes to a great school in a non-violent neighborhood. He can get there
safely and return the same way. The adults in his world are committed to both
his mental and physical health. His parents can give him three meals a
day and snacks. He has the opportunity and ability to read, play sports,
play music and play in general without fear. He has a clean bed to sleep
in and new clothes to wear. His shoes fit and new ones are purchased if
they don’t. He is told over and over and over again that he is loved.

This portrait, for much of the
country’s children, is the exception and not the rule. That is the
truth. And we believe in truth telling in our house. So instead of
saying “it’s complicated,” or “can we talk about that later?” I pulled
over under a shady tree and turned around and told him some of the following:
(Before I share some of it with you, please know this: I am not an
African American history scholar, a representative of the BLM movement, or writer of Black culture. What I know
is from what I’ve read, seen and felt. There areresourcesto explore
further, and Joe and I have done so. Please take a moment to do the same.*)

As this nation grew and the need for
field labor increased, America engaged in the slave trade. Joe knows some
of this from school already. He knows Africans were brought to the U.S.
on slave ships.

What he doesn’t know are the
conditions of that capture. Men, women and children captured by nets,
with whips, and herded

Once they arrived, they were
separated from family groups and communities, not knowing language, stripped
completely nude and placed on auction blocks in shipyards to be ogled, checked
and purchased for labor. I cannot imagine it, can you? Please
think of it if you can. Thirsting and hungry, disoriented and sick,
scared and angry, you are pushed and any clothing you had removed. Beaten
and starved, still in chains you are forced to look at faces so unfamiliar and
have your mouth opened, your teeth checked, your genitals squeezed, your back
and legs slapped. Your heart is racing, you have no words and no one will
listen. When does resignation set in? When would it for you?

When you finally arrive to the shack
in which you will be living, you are handed over to faces similar to your own
who have had similar journeys and if you are lucky you will be given some food,
find someone who may be able to speak your language and find a place you can
finally stretch out to sleep.

In the days,

weeks and months that follow you
learn quickly you must work long hours in fields, being beaten if you stop,
killed if you try to leave. You will not be paid. You have no
rest. Everything you say or do has to be done with permission. You
may find love and have a family. But your wife and child are not
recognized as such, and your wife can be repeatedly raped by any white man who
chooses to do so. Your child can be taken from you and sold alone as
young as 2 and you will never see her again. Can you imagine it?
Knowing that your wife is being sold and will be taken to the block and
stripped naked, perhaps still leaking milk from nursing your son?

Actual "lynching postcard" from 1891

And if you try to rebel or escape,
if captured you’d be killed perhaps that would take the form of lynching.
It is absolutely unfathomable to me that this word has lost its meaning. Lynchings were brutal public exhibitions. But unlike others, this was a family sport. Men,
women and children would come to watch a Black man
killed.

This legacy is, in part at least,
what I think has become a movement. Because out of this people who did
not freely elect to come and build America, recognition as human has been
an inter-generational struggle. If there is any doubt of this,
consider what happened once slavery ended and sharecropping took its
place? When has there been a time, collectively or historically that blackness
has been seen and given its place as equal on the keyboard—without a
fight? Men who had to call someone younger “master” all their lives, and
never taught to read had topass strenuous literacy testsin order to register to vote.

Joe knows a lot of this
history. We’ve been to sites where they’ve been able to look inslave cabins and see the conditions where dozens of people had to live with no privacy as
compared to the master’s house. (I’ve made it a point to

show inequality as I have balance. The explanations never
get easier, and it hurts every time.)

As the years have gone on and
despite the passing of theCivil Rights Act, African
Americans have spent so much time in the shadows, as described hauntingly inRalph Ellison’sInvisible Man; where they
are not seen. Living in projects where they are not heard. The
successes achieved have been despite the odds not because of incentives.
In fact, once I told a professor of mine that the only positive
connotation of blackness I could find was financial: to be “in the black” meant
solvency. In fashion--in art, black is a negative. Less than and
not equal to.

One particularly haunting memory I
have is sitting in a classroom and hearing howV.S. Naipaulhad written that a particular tree
that grew fruit was not native to the soil, but instead grew there from the
ingested seeds of the buried bodies of slaves brought there, in whose stomachs
resided the possibility of something else thriving in a placeit shouldn’t.

How can such
meanings move along without a collective scream so deep and low and harrowing
that the whole world seems to shift at its sigh?

Sometimes hurts run in such quantity
that there is no reservoir big enough to hold it. We all have moments
like that. But what about collectively? What if you bear on your
skin the incalculable proof of your worth? What if you have a deep held
knowledge of something that isn’t right but you cannot articulate it? How
long before that boils over? How many generations of shared memory?
At some point, the need to be seen becomes overwhelming.

“It’s as if,” I tell Joe, “that your
friend who is Black, well you both are sitting together and only you are chosen
for something, even if you are dressed the same, eating the same lunch and are
the same height, weight everything. The only reason you’re chosen is
because you look white.”

“That’s not right.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“If they just spent some time
talking to my friend they’d see how awesome he is, that we’re the same.”

Is it? How much of blackness
do we see? Or brownness? Or difference? How much do we take
in? How much do we ignore? In the dark is the unknown. All
any of us ever want, truly need, to thrive and be happy is to be known,
acknowledged, seen.

I do not condone violence.
There is no justification for it, retaliatory or otherwise. I am saying
here that if we begin to understand the history of this outcry, we can begin to
see one another. And once we see one another, we can talk to each
other. And that is where it all begins. That’s the process that is
going to take us out of this. It is a risk, just like writing this to you
is. But really, is there any choice anymore? What will be left if
we do not act? If we do not try to understand one another? If we do
not begin to see, really see, one another?

When I went to visit a former
professor in Hong Kong, we made a trip to Guangzhou. There was the
American consulate, often the last stop for adoptive families taking their baby
girls home. I saw one mother just staring at her baby who just kept
staring at her own hands. She noticed I was watching and motioned me to
sit near her. “In the orphanage,” she said, “the babies stopped crying
because no one ever came to see them. So they usually just start staring
at their own hands, to calm and soothe. I just want her to know that I’m
here. That I see her. That I’ll always see her.” I nod.
“It’s the way she will process her world. I need to let her know she’s
important. I really see her.”

Do you know why babies, all babies
love "Peekaboo?" Think of what's said. You close your
eyes and cover them in front of her and then in a surprised voice and engaging
smile, say "Peeakaboo! I SEE YOU!"

The baby giggles with delight and
surprise every single time. She is seen! You are happy to see her!
You weren't looking and now you are! How grand, how amazing, how
fantastic!

How simple.

Please pull your hands away--and look
with wonder and surprise and what is in front of you. Ease pain, share
your own, offer a good morning, accept one in return. If there is
something that bothers the corner of your eye, take the second or third step to
make it right. There is no time that is wasted in service of the
acknowledgement of another.

So I am telling you: I see
you. You. And I am willing to say that I don’t understand why you
look sad and upset. I don’t know why your forehead furrows and your fists
are clenched. I am lost why you seem so very afraid. I don’t
understand, but I see you. And I will sit with you so you can tell me the
whys. All of them, every one. And hopefully, in that beginning of
all things we will understand. It’s not much, I know. But it’s a
start.

Then there are those who have made
themselves small. Who want desperately to disappear. Whose voices
are low and quiet. Whose clothes and hair and movements make them blend
into the scenes behind them. Yes, you don’t know them, but they are
there. And sometimes when they keep going unseen for long. They
become loud. One sense gives way to another. They are tired of
being unseen so they want to be heard. And sometimes explosively.
That’s next. Stay with me. I promise it’ll help. Please
stay with me for Hearing Grace, Part II.

What the story said...my reviews on goodreads

“You must understand, this is one of those moments.” “What moments?” “One of the moments you keep to yourself,” he said. “What do you mean?” I said. “why?” “We’re in a war,” he said. “The story of this war—dates, names, who started it, why—that belongs to everyone. [….] But something like this—this is yours. It belongs only to you. And me. Only to us” (56). This moment, in Téa Obreht’s lyrical first novel, The Tiger’s Wife, tells you the entirety of the story of love and loss, of memory, maps and war, of science, fables and imagined histories. The tale, set in a fictional Balkan province, is about the relationship between the narrator, Natalia and her grandfather who is a doctor. And the story involves the wars that have ravaged that area for years.

If you think back to the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, you may remember the horror and shock of those years of unending war. The bombing of a 400 year old bridge, the massacres, the deadening of Sarajevo. While none of these events are overtly, or even covertly, covered in the novel, their echo remains. This is a novel whose strength lies in the ability to translate myth and fable, to make the moments that seem almost unknowable known. The excerpt offered in the beginning of this review is an example of that, the Grandfather takes the young Natalia past curfew to witness the surreal site of a starving elephant being led on the city streets to the closed city zoo, the place of their weekly pilgrimages. During mercurial times, there was this moment of placidity and fantasy. The war which raged and continued and was irrational as wars are, there is the fantastical presence of an elephant sloping up the quiet neighborhood street. While Natalia frets that no one will believe her, her grandfather corrects her idea by telling her that history can be something personalized and intimate. Not meant to be shared by the world, but by those who you love and trust to see your vision. It makes sense, because when histories are challenged and threatened, documents concerning your birth, the death of your families are challenged or lost, history becomes something far more ephemeral. Far more illusory unless it is placed in the permanence of your own heart.

She begins Chapter 2 by saying, “Everything necessary to understand my Grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man” (32). So it is between these poles of myth and story that we can locate the history of this narrator and her grandfather, both physicians, both straddling the line between science and home remedy. I could tell you at length about both, but that truly would be spoiling the journey of the story for you. But I will say that the language Obreht uses is so languid and lush, masterful and mindful that you begin to be seduced by it all. So reason, the questions of markings of slippery occurrences of war that do belong to the world that could ground the reader in the world Obreht is translating is lost because that is the moment she is NOT choosing to share. But here is the thing. I needed it. Even in a footnote or an afterward. I needed a timeline of the events that brought the destruction of these people to such impossibilities of existence. Because even though it is a public history, it is one I do not know well. It would be wrong to assume the knowledge on the part of a Western audience I think, it’s unfortunate that this is not a familiar landscape or language. I know, in the recesses of my mind I know the wars in the Balkans. The horrors, the rape camps of Bosnia, the destruction, the evacuation of Serbians…but I don’t know enough, not nearly enough to be lulled into this lush tale. A part of me refused to be completely seduced by it. Because I didn’t understand enough about it.

There is a way in which myth sustains us when horrors are too much. When person and home and identity fall away, and where you cannot locate your birthplace on a map, because it has been eliminated, what do you hold onto except your stories? As the author writes, “We had used a the map on every road trip we had ever taken, and it showed in the marker scribbling all over it: the crossed-out areas we were supposed to avoid…. I couldn’t find Zdrevkov, the place where my grandfather died, on that map. I couldn’t find Brejevina either, but I had known in advance that it was missing, so we had drawn it in” (16). Map lines, map dots, erased and redrawn because of war. How do you locate who you are, if you cannot really know where you are from? The erasing of history, of place, of belonging, of self is such a legitimate tragic legacy of war. So it is understandable that the novel moves between these two myths to bookend it, asking the reader to locate the grandfather and the narrator in its midst. I just think that the novel, which is a remarkable achievement for such a young writer, would have been that much more strong, viscerally, had it had the historical reference points it alluded to. That being said, though, it is a novel of quiet questions and loud answers and makes you wonder long after you’ve set it aside. Questions like, “What is the moment you have? The one you find that belongs to you? Who will you share it with and what familiar myth might you create?”